Hello everyone,
and welcome to a new episode of no one’s favorite series:
Site Update
Hooray :)
Today, I’ll tell you that I’m taking a short vacation, then I have some news about the pdfs of my articles and last but not least, I have a little sneak peek of something that’ll come out this fall.
Actually, if all things go well, a LOT of stuff is going to come out this fall.
But yeah… this thing is probably going to be the first.
So without any further ado, let’s jump right in…
And the first point on the agenda is my vacation.
1. My Vacation
Actually, I should say Staycation, because I’m not really going anywhere. I’m just taking a couple of weeks off and I’ll do my taxes (so fun) and I’ll prepare to move house, because I actually found a new apartment.
And I’ll also just enjoy a few days of late summer doing nothing :).
I’ll still reply to my email and I’ll also answer all your comments though, so keep ’em coming. I’m just taking a break from writing. But I’ll
Cool, next.
2. The PDFs
If you’re a member of the site, then you have the option to download articles as a pdf, to read them offline or print them. And while that is nice in theory, I think we can all agree on one thing:
my pdfs SUCK!!
Like… the layout is just bad!
The thing is that they’re auto-generated and the software I am using is quite dated already and really fails with the design. And it really fails with handling the example buttons. This has been low-key bugging me for a while now, and I have now made a decision:
I am going to create properly formatted pdfs of all articles by hand.
So it’s not only going to have proper images, and there won’t be this ugly “?” where the audio buttons are, but I’ll also make sure that the page breaks make sense and that there is some extra space on the page for you to take notes.
This is quite the project actually, because I’ll have to do it with over 500 articles (not including the various specials and the Advent Calendar series). So it’ll take a while till they’re all updated. But I’ve already done 50 or so and they definitely look much better than before AND they’re also an up to date version of the article, because some have changed quite a bit over the years.
So yeah… I can’t say this is a project that I am looking forward to, but I also think you deserve better than these shitty looking pdfs I have had until now.
All right.
And now on to something that I’m actually really excited for :)
3. Sneak Peek
Most of you already know the YDG dictionary I’m slowly building.
Well, it’s about to come to a browser near you :).
Because soon, the dictionary will be available as a browser extension.
You can easily add it to your browser and use it to look up words while you do your regular surfing.
All you have to do is mark a word, do right-click and select “look up” and you’ll get the results straight from the YDG dictionary.
You’ll also be able to enter a search term directly and eventually, hopefully, you’ll be able to log in to your YourDailyGerman account there and also take notes on individual entries.
And if you’re now like
“Wait, what do you mean by taking notes?”
Well… that’s one of the things that’ll come out this fall.
But that’s it for today :)
Let me know in the comments what you think of the extension and if you’d use it and also let me know if you have any thoughts on the pdf thing.
Oh, and I almost forgot… I added an option to convert stories you made with my GPT story generator as a pdf.
So yeah… have a nice rest of the summer – or winter if you’re in the southern hemisphere. And I’ll see ya’ll for semester start in September!!
Audio Speed
Dark Mode
Thanks you all for the supporrt you are giving and with that support today i am able to join as as a member and learn. I hope I could return the favour someday. Thanks to the person who is running this amazing website and reason for thiss great community.
Very minor typo: OMG first Daniel Craig and now Emanuel. English spelling is “y’all.” As I understand it this is the singular; the plural is “all y’all”
Oh, he messed it up, too, the old Brit :D?
Ive dipped in and out of this website since I moved to Berlin over half a decade ago. I always find it fascinating how almost every language has these old school websites, disconnected from the typical brands (like Duolingo or whatever) just run by passionate people and they are always some of the best most invaluable resources you can find. Anyways nice to see it going from strength to strength, you were definitely a part of my journey, passed my B2 about a year ago, started C1 but I can’t lie, I’ve gotten lazy. But I digress, this post is just another example of the passion and effort that goes into the site. So I just wanna give props and say mad respect to you Emmanuel
Vielen lieben Dank :)!!
Great update! I haven’t downloaded any PDFs as of yet but can’t wait to!
Also, YDG browser extension sounds such an amazing tool for German learners like myself. We really could do with background content on some German words. I for one, is all for it.
Another thing i wanted to inform you about is that I cleared my Goethe B2 Exam!! And I scored fairly well and now on to TestDaF, which I feel is the hardest challenge because there is a lot of scientific text. Regardless, we move and like always thank you so much for your updates!
Hallo Emmanuel,
In which format do you have your articles? I can definitely recommend LaTeX to automatically generate pdfs, even if it would be a bit complex to make a converter into this language. There are packages for everything, so probably also one to play sound for the examples.
Hmmm, interesting idea, but doing it by hand has the added benefit that I update every post a little, which is definitely necessary. Clean out some typos, adding some headlines, etc.
Super
I wanna help with some article conversions! Would it be too much of a pain to share the specs and assign some articles or would it be helpful?
Interesting idea, thanks for offering this!! I’ve sent you an email :)
Ich würde gerne eine Browser Extension.
Would it be possible to include the full date in the PDFs, instead of just the month and year?
It would be useful for archival purposes; only if it is not too much trouble, of course
It’s possible for the ones I haven’t done yet, but just out of curiosity… why?
The date has nothing to do with the order of articles or anything. It’s literally just the date I created the file.
In that case it’s not really necessary. Originally the date in the (old version) of the PDFs had at least a correlation with the publishing date of the corresponding article. If the new version don’t have that relationship any longer, then don’t worry about it.
It was just to have a method to archive the PDFs in publication order.
Have a great time-off! You deserve it.
For me, I use the dictionary and your opinions on HOW to use the words most of the time. So as a browser extension…that is cool.
One thing that I would like is to be able to see all of my comments – and more importantly your answers to those questions. Currently, I have to delete the notification to turn off the bell from ringing (and from me getting repeated notifications). So without knowing exactly where the question and answer lives on this massive website, I can’t find our past communications. They are, alas, gone forever. Backburner. Have a great time away!
Wait, is the bell still ringing?!?! I actually thought I had disabled that months ago. That’s interesting/annoying!
I have enabled the comment overview, next to the comment count at the top of the form. It looks a bit bland but you can flip through all your comments there now :)
It doesn’t seem like it is ‘ringing’ (no animation), but the red circle showing new message is on – and it doesn’t turn off unless I select delete. Thank you for the ‘my content and settings’ pointer. 54 pages of comments and answers!
It would great if that was in the “Members” menu with the Notes. They seem very similar. Also what ‘settings’ and ‘content’ are supposed to show up in there? It looks like it is all Comments, but that word doesn’t appear when you hover over it. I saw that earlier but thought it was to go to your Notes and Website preferences.
Thank you again. Go relax. :)
Hahaha, I’m packing and cleaning, so that’s peak relaxation right here.
The “settings” are stuff like “manage your comment subscriptions” which I had blanked out after I added the bell notification feature. I found the idea that people get loads of mails just because people are replying to their comments kind of a waste :).
I’ll try to make that menu into its own page. The thing is, is that it’s coming from the comment software and it’s not trivial to make that into its own page. So that really is backburner, I have soooo many projects :D
Oh, but there’s no actual ringing sound, right? Because there used to be, but I had to turn it off because it wouldn’t stop!
Dear Emmanuel, all ıs ok , good…
HAVE A NICE HOLIDAY rest tıme , good rest of Summer (North Hemısphere we are:)) to everybody…
Die Browserextension (?) klingt super! Schöne Spätsommerpause!
Hallo,
Nice to know you found an apartment :)
I’d definitely use the extension, I’m always looking up words in dictionaries, so this would be very useful!!
Sorry, but have no ideas for the pdfs, I’m a very matter-of-fact person, so I never have ideas for “pretty” layouts, which doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them :)
All in all, it seems you’ll be very busy over the Autumn, so I hope you enjoy and make the most of your staycation!
Bis bald!
Viel Spass!
Hallo lieber Emanuel,
Es sieht ein wahnsinnig hartes Unternehmen aus , was du agefang hast.Ich wünsche
Dir zuerst viel Glück mit was du entscheidet hast. Und schönen Urlaub noch .
Viele Grüsse nach Berlin .
Good luck with the move, and enjoy your vacation. :)
Danke :)!!
I’d use the browser extention. Sounds very nice. Thanks
The browser extention sounds cool. Definitely gonna be using that if its available for firefox.
What would be awesome is if it would be possible for members to see a list of their comment history. Not sure if i mentioned that ever.
Enjoy the time off and good luck with the move!
I built a beta version once but I stopped working on it after I added the notification bell system. You can find it here:
https://yourdailygerman.com/my-comments/
There’s also an overview from the comment system itself, but I blanked it out. I guess I could bring that back.
oh that link is basically exactly what i was after
although it doesn’t seem to go all the way back
No, it’s a half finished product really :).
I now activated the archive of the comment system itself. You can access it by clicking next to the comment counter at the top of the comment section. There’s a three line icon. You’ll get an overlay window with all your comments paginated. That’s the best I can do for now :)
cool thanks!
Sehr schoen,
Bis bald
Enjoy your Summer holiday in die Oase der Einkommensteuer (sadly distant from eine echte Einkommensteuroase, known in English as an “Income tax haven”, but routinely pronounced as “Inkomm-tux-hafen”, as a nod to the Swiss, I imagine). The new pdfs look great, even if I find myself cringing(*) at the amount of work required to get through the backlog.
I’m 100% in on the browser extension: as I’ve doubtless already mentioned, I still use the Google Translate version (similar, but less focused deal to what you’re showing here: just select some –German, say– text(**) and up pops a little icon that you click on to have it translate the text for you), which is far from perfect, aber wahnsinnig praktisch. The other obvious candidate here was Reverso’s browser extension, but it proved horribly slow, and wasn’t all that impressive even when it worked, so I deleted it after about a week of trying it as a GT replacement.
(*) Not sure that “cringe/cringing” as adopted in German also has this original (OK, standard English!) sense of reeling in horror — it seems as if it’s more focused on embarrassment/Fremdscham.
(**) I realise yours will be word-specific, not for longer pieces of text, so it’ll be a great complement the GT extension, perfect for those “deep-dive” occasions.
I feel like the german use of “cringe” just seems to be used as a generic term for anything considered somewhat bad…
The specific english sense of cringe you mention is interesting as for me its less associated with expressing fear and more like expressing what fremdschämen expresses. But your definitely not wrong and the dictionary gives “to shrink or cower in fear” as its first definition…. and i do remember He-Man had a cat called cringer who used to cower in fear all the time…
Yep, strangely enough I started writing that paragraph and the word “cringing” just seemed to be the “next one in line” (human imitates Chat GPT…), but that morphing of the meaning in recent times immediately set me to second-guessing what I was writing. Even after reading the confirmation from the dictionary it still felt a tad seltsam when I was pressing the submit button.
“somewhat bad”
That’s a bit too broad, I would say.
If I drink a shitty coffee, I don’t think I would call it “cringe”.
There has to be an element of fremdschämen or schämen in it.
yeah, could be. i do feel it gets a bit more broadly than english though but i could be off on that too. Maybe it just gets used more…
It does get used a lot these days in Berlin, I agree.
I loved Cringer! And Orko was the man! (so to speak)
I’m very into the O on Orko’s outfit. Skelletor is pretty cool too tbh
Meiner Meinung nach kann cringe auch ein Gefühl von Ekel haben. Es hängt natürlich vom Kontext ab. Vielleicht ist es ein Neuzugang.
The film was cringeworthy. Keine Angst hier, nur Ekel.
Vielleicht ist es meistens in Kombination mit -worthy. Ich habe auch cringy gehört. Wieder ist es Ekel, keine Angst.
Hmmm, that gave me an idea… add a “mark text” option and have that translated by GPT.
Oh man… so many ideas for functions :).
“cringe” in German is indeed focused on “fremdschämen”, but we “learned” that from English speaking YouTube and TikTok.
alright, fair enough. I’m curious – do you think chat gpt is a better translation tool than deepL or is chat gpt just easy to intergrate ?
No clue honestly, I have never used DeepL and I’m not using ChatGPT for translation.
It is very easy to integrate though, and I imagine it’s also cheaper than DeepL.
I feel like I saw a comparison between GT, GPT and DeepL once and GPT is doing just as well, if not better.
A friend works for DeepL and she said that they’re not really worried though. I think they’re more focused on custom models that are enterprise grade.
From what I’ve seen, DeepL does a better job overall. It tends to give you more natural translations. If you know enough about the languages you’re working with, you can use the word swap feature. That makes it close to unbeatable.
You can click on each word of the translation and see other possible translations. Then click to insert. Or you can get a dictionary entry with possible translations. Sometimes the dictionary also has example sentences, pronunciation (AI, but good), and notes on how common different words are.
If you want a quick translation to get the gist of something, GPT is probably good enough.